Facility monitoring systems have been developed which display data collected from a plurality of sensors disposed in a manufacturing facility. A user of a facility monitoring system may want to compare data generated from two or more sensors to determine whether devices or machines in the facility are operating correctly. To allow the comparison of data from two sensors, for example, the facility monitoring system can obtain a first set of measured values from a first sensor and a second set of measured values from a second sensor. Thereafter, the system can display the first and second sets of measured values on a computer monitor.
Generally, when comparing a first set of measured values to a second set of measured values, a meaningful comparison can only be obtained when the first and second sets of measured values are obtained over a common time interval and at a common sampling frequency. However, facility-monitoring systems can often generate the first and second sets of data over differing time intervals. For example, the system could generate the first set of measured values starting at 7:00 P.M. on a specific day and generate the second set of measured values starting at 8:00 A.M. on the same day. Thus, comparison of these two sets of measured values obtained over differing time intervals would not be useful when attempting to determine the operating status of a device or machine.
Thus, a need exists for a system and method that can obtain, store and display both the first and second sets of measured values from first and second sensors, respectively, for comparison when the first and second sets of measured values were generated at a substantially similar time interval.